While easily perceived as simply naïve, my tempered concern related to Malaria and Chikungunya were contextualized to a more pressing fear, much closer to home; Lyme disease. It is debilitating, it is poorly diagnosed and it is endemic in Ontario

For us in Canada, the results should be an early warning sign of things to come. As average temperatures rise, so will the risk. This means the timeline for spread could be shorter and Lyme disease may be coming to a wilderness near you.

I hope that on Monday a majority of MPs vote in favour of Elizabeth's May lyme disease bill, but I want to clarify a point that she ignored in my last blog: we should trumpet science over emotions in this debate. I hope that Monday a majority of MPs vote in favour of passing this bill. We need to identify the scope of the problem, and disease like this need a national strategy. I just hope that we can put the emotions aside and turn toward the science, otherwise we are doomed to be victims of ideology, and we have a responsibility to do better than that: paramedics and politicians alike.

For those readers who may not know about the impact of Lyme disease on Canadian society, its incidence has been spreading. The goal is to find better approaches to prevent Lyme through greater awareness, to identify best practices to diagnose and treat Lyme, and research to improve our knowledge.

CLD should be considered in the same category as IEI-EMF or electro-hypersensitivity, or multiple-chemical sensitivity: they are not recognized diseases and other causes for these symptoms should be sought. Instead, to treat CLD a potentially dangerous protocol using very protracted courses of antibiotics that has shown to make no difference beyond placebo is used.

According to an article in the New York Times, "emerging diseases have quadrupled in the last half-century." The increase is mainly due to human encroachment into and destruction of wildlife habitat. For example, one study concluded that a four per cent increase in Amazon deforestation led to a 50 per cent increase in malaria because mosquitoes, which transmit the disease, thrive in the cleared areas.